Christmas with Assange

Confined in Ecuador’s embassy in London, Assange
shows a patent physical and psychological deterioration. But with his
intellectual appetite and attention span intact, he seeks international
and Argentinean support. Spanish

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Videoconference of Assange at the Latin American Progressive Encouter, Quito, Ecuador, September 2015. Demotix/Oscar Garrido Ruiz. Some rights reserved.

Christmas in the Ecuadorian embassy with Julian
Assange, who has been confined there for the last three years. A quiet
Christmas, with its share of warmth and gentle laughter, a modest amount of
alcohol, and a few friends and family. Christmas Eve with Assange’s father
John, a successful architect, and Australian like his son. Present also are an
Australian documentary film-maker, a Greek-French film director, and a
Guatemalan human rights lawyer.
Plus the present writer who requested and obtained permission to attend
and to write an account of the Christmas of a man who has spent three years
without seeing daylight, or breathing fresh air, or feeling the breeze on his
face, or glimpsing the horizon.

Salmon stuffed with mascarpone and greens cooked
by the lawyer to a recipe that her mother dictated over the telephone from
across the Atlantic. For desert, a chestnut tart brought from the supermarket.
Sparkling wine for a toast proposed by the lawyer “that this may be the last
Christmas you spend here.” Argentinian wines donated by the now ex-ambassador
Alicia Castro, the diplomat who has given by far the most support to Assange
during his confinement and with whom Assange has established a firm friendship.
Someone uncorks Assange’s favourite wine, Alta Vista Malbec, while the
Wikileaks founder explains his preference. ”Alta Vista was the name of the
server that later became Google”, he says, in reference to one of his close
Silicon Valley enemies.

After two days in black sweatpants and discoloured
t-shirt, Assange has donned what for him constitutes formal attire: a blue
plaid flannel shirt, grey corduroy trousers - both un-ironed - and military
ankle boots.

Covering
the world

As usual with Assange, the conversation covers
the world with everyone taking part. Assange speaks a great deal - he is fond
of speaking - but he also knows how to listen. China, the USA, XI, Trump,
France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, Tsipiras, Varoufakis, Lehman
Brothers, Turkey, Erdogan, Chechnya, Kodorov, Russia, Putin, Ecuador, Correa,
Evo Morales, Bolivia, Guatemala, Australia, Scotland, Salmon-Sturgeon, the
Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar, Islamic State, Libya, Benghazi, Hillary, Saudi
Arabia, the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon. The Australian film-maker reveals that
he is making a documentary in Southeast Asia on how the US is surrounding China
with propaganda while building up its own military presence in the region.

The film director says that his next two film
projects include one on hiring foreigners in China (“an allegory on the decadence
of one empire and the rise of another”), and a second about a dance form
developed by a Sufi guru in Chechnya that combines movement with a local
version of Islam. The lawyer expresses dismay at the extent of violence in
Mexico and the United States, and goes on to compare the executions carried out
by Islamic State with those that occur in Guatemala where beheadings are
routine and skulls are sliced open to expose brain matter. She recounts an
incident in which decapitated heads were lined up at the entrance of a
legislature in protest against the legislators and to discourage them from
sitting. None of this, however, attracts international attention, she
complains.

The gathering also touches on Argentina, and
notably on Macri’s electoral triumph and possible consequences. A brief
discussion ensues on the late public prosecutor Alberto Nisman, a case that
both Assange and the lawyer have followed with interest. “You, of course, are
not going to commit suicide,” she tells him half-jokingly - a slight moment of
tension that the film director dissipates with an offering of foie gras that he
had brought from France the day before. No one opens gifts, but the guests hand around traditional Christmas crackers. The lawyer has brought a record player
with some vinyl records in an effort to make things cheerful, but there was
little appetite for song or dance.
After a few moments of rock music, the volume was turned down to a
background hum so as not to interfere with the conversation.

Sex, tragedy
and farce

Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy, which is located not far
from Harrods department store in one of London’s most elegant neighbourhoods,
ever since he violated his conditional liberty by seeking refuge there. He is
wanted - though not accused - by the Swedish justice system for possible sex
offences. Four years have now passed since the occurrences took place and it is
hard at this distance not to be incredulous at how it all began. According to
the extensive documentation on the case that I have examined, Assange is under
investigation for “sexual assault” because a woman declared that he had not
been aware that the condom he was using had broken during an act of consensual
sex, and also for a “minor sexual assault” because another woman asserted that
after having sex with him one evening and also on the following morning - after
which both slept for a while - he then woke up and again had sex with her at a
moment when, according to her, she was half asleep, although later when she was fully awake, they once more had
consensual sex. Assange claims that the woman was fully awake throughout.

The charge of possible “sexual assault” based on
the testimony of the first woman has now lapsed; but the Swedish authorities
continue to investigate whether the moment during which the second woman was
“half asleep” amounts to rape without the use of force, although neither she
nor the first woman has ever accused Assange of acting against their will,
still less of rape. Nevertheless, worried because Assange had not used a condom
with her, the second woman spoke to the first woman (the two were friends) and
both thereby learned that they had recently slept with the same man. They
decided to approach the police, not to denounce Assange, but to oblige him to
take an HIV test.

The betrayal that the women will have felt on
learning that they had unwittingly shared a lover, the media lawyer that took
up their case, an ambitious prosecutor, a feminist politician, the close
relationship between Sweden and the United States, and Assange’s own lack of
judgment (he continues to maintain that he slept with both women for security
reasons - so that he could be sure of their trust at a time when he was under
cover and staying with strangers because he had just published dispatches on
the Iraq War and was being pursued by the United States), on these and various
other twists and turns and complications concerning the background and
personalities of the two women, Assange discoursed in some detail during the
course of a 6-hour conversation two days before Christmas, to which he added
some thoughts on the legal system, culture, politics and history of Sweden in
what amounted to a veritable potpourri of tragedy and farce.

The matter may become clearer during the next three
months now that Sweden and Ecuador have agreed to allow Assange to be
interviewed at the embassy, after which the prosecutor will decide whether or
not the Australian has a case to answer. Assange appears convinced that he will
be indicted: “The prosecutor will look ridiculous if he drops the matter after
all this time. This is the most publicised legal process in Swedish history.
Search my name on the Internet and you’ll find it appears together with
“Sweden” more times than major companies like Ikea and Saab, or famous Swedes
like Olaf Palme and Ingmar Bergman. This case makes Sweden a focus of world
attention. They can’t simply let it go.”

US
accusations

But Assange is also convinced that Swedish
justice will eventually absolve him, if not immediately, then on appeal. He
claims that the case itself is not the real problem, which is why he has
largely avoided discussing it in public. “Speaking about it serves no purpose.
Because the issue is not whether I’m a rapist, but why the US is pursuing me.”
According to an official response to a question from an Italian journalist,
Sweden admits to having held discussions with the US Justice Department about
Assange, and Assange is convinced that those discussions concerned his eventual
extradition to the United States. In the State of Virginia, near the US
capital, a grand jury is in the process of investigating him and may already
have accused him of espionage, conspiracy, and theft of classified documents.
Grand jury accusations have no time limit and are secret (“sealed”) until a
prosecutor chooses to make them known. Until then, it is a federal crime to
reveal their existence.

Grand juries can order raids on homes and
offices, and subpoena witnesses without authorisation from a judge. Some
subpoenaed witnesses as well as Assange’s US lawyers have stated that a grand
jury indictment is imminent and may have already been issued. Since Sweden
refuses to provide an assurance that Assange will not be extradited to the
United States - despite legislation that prohibits extraditions for suspected
political offences - Assange refuses to travel to Sweden even at the cost of
wasting his life in the Ecuadorian embassy. The charge of “minor sexual
assault” expires in 2020.

During the last three years both Assange and Wikileaks
have not just been fighting off legal and technological attacks, but have also
stuck to their core task of publishing secret documents, among them the
electronic communications of Syrian officials including Bashar al Assad and of
CIA chief John Brennan, the denunciations of a British nuclear submariner, and
above all the secret clauses contained in three trade deals (TIPP, TPP and
TISA) [1] that the US is pursuing with dozens of countries and from which the
BRICS and Argentina among others are excluded. Assange claims that the
objective of these clauses is to isolate emerging economies, especially China,
and to replace the World Trade Organisation with a legal, customs, and internet
framework designed specifically to favour US interests: a kind of reverse
universal jurisdiction in which a single country exercises power while the
others fall into line.

The framework aims to facilitate extraditions to
the United States for offences committed abroad, and to eliminate obstacles to
the establishment of US corporations in the signatory countries.

Still
active, but deteriorating

Although during Christmas week diaries are less
crowded and work diminishes to make way for more prolonged socialising,
Assange’s intellectual appetite and attention span remain astonishing - despite
his evident physical and psychological deterioration. During the lengthy session he had with myself and his father
- a man of wide learning who knows Menem personally (a disaster, wasn’t he?)
and who asked after Cristina - Assange led the discussion from first to last
with only the occasional interruption from us, his listeners, when we posed a
question or offered a brief comment.
During recent months, he has had regular meetings with Slovenian
philosopher Slavov Zizek and Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis. Together they
are working on the creation of a progressive think tank whose purpose will be
to combine innovative thinking with the latest developments in technology. “I’m
not thinking of this as a left-wing project, although the press likes to
describe it as such. We want it to be open to different ideologies.”

But the deterioration is obvious. The pain in
his right shoulder is so acute that he can scarcely move it, and doctors have
so far been unable to diagnose the problem - in part because the British
authorities will not permit him to visit a medical facility for an ultrasound
scan and computed tomography. He has a split tooth caused by biting on
something in a meal served to him during his brief stay in a British prison. It
needs to be extracted, or at least to be treated, but his request for a dental
appointment has likewise been rejected. He has been taking pills daily to
relieve the pain. For a time, his
doctors gave him morphine but he says that a few months ago they changed the
drug, though thankfully he experienced no withdrawal symptoms.

For two years he has been trying to find a
doctor willing to treat him more fully than has been possible during brief
informal visits, but several British and German doctors whom he has consulted
have refused to help because their insurance policies are not valid under
Ecuadorian law and also because they fear that their association with Assange
could prejudice their professional careers.

In addition to these potentially dangerous
ailments, lack of sunshine and physical exercise are evident in Assange’s
increasingly pallid complexion and lack of muscle tone. Because the embassy is
located on the ground floor, three years have elapsed since he last climbed a
staircase. Before injuring his shoulder, he practised boxing with a Wikileaks
volunteer who works as a bodyguard, but since then his only physical activity
has been to walk or jog on a treadmill, which he does less and less frequently
because the activity increases his sensation of confinement and immobility when
objects fail to loom larger as he “walks” towards them as they would if he were
free. Observers have noted that
Assange has lost all notion of time and space, that he spends hours oblivious
to the passage of day to night, and that despite his sedentary way of life he
has not gained weight because he seldom remembers to eat until a member of his
team suggests that he do so.

Since he has received numerous death threats,
not least from crazy Americans who even publish little maps for would-be
assassins showing how to travel from the airport to the embassy, he rarely
approaches the windows during daylight hours; though he does so at night and
likes to take photographs of the outside world with his light-sensitive camera
and telephoto lens. He seeks out
and snaps the security cameras placed round the embassy, and also the vans parked
outside from which spies keep watch. Then he enlarges the images and checks the
technical manuals so that he can understand the level of sophistication of the
equipment used to monitor his movements. One of the cameras he photographed
recently and that he showed to his guests on Christmas Eve was fitted with
a miniature windscreen wiper for rainy days.

Maximum security prisoners generally have the
right to an hour of exercise in fresh air every day. But when Assange asked the
British government to allow him to exercise on the terrace next to the embassy,
permission was refused. In three years, Assange has ventured out to the balcony
in daylight on only four occasions: his sole encounters with the sky and the
wind. Twice he appeared in order to read out statements on his legal position,
once so as to be photographed with Noam Chomsky, and once for a
photograph with American civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. “That last time, I
really defied death,” Assange tells us. “Only later did I realise that years
before Jackson had been standing alongside Martin Luther King on a different
balcony, when King was assassinated.”

Before even approaching the balcony, he first
checks out the brickwork in the surrounding buildings to see if, from the
vantage of the window, he can spot any change of pattern or formation. Although
he can read without glasses, he finds it difficult to judge distances
visually. “I feel as if I’m living
in a play with people entering and leaving the stage while I stay here watching
them go by,” he remarks somberly. To illuminate the conference room where
Assange receives guests, he makes use of a powerful lamp of the kind used
by professional photographers in their studios. He says that it gives the best
light for reflecting colours as they appear in sunlight - “except for blue”.

Worries

Those close to Assange tell of his reluctance to
speak about his health problems because he does not want to give adversaries
the impression that he is close to defeat; but his colleagues are worried. The embassy premises amount to a mere
two hundred square metres (roughly 2,000 square feet) and although Assange
enjoys relative freedom to move around, that has not always been the case. Apparently,
the previous ambassador disliked him; and for a whole year he was confined to
the twenty-five square metres of his bedroom where there is space solely for a
single bed and a wardrobe, plus a thirty-square-metre work space stuffed with
computers and bookshelves which he has to share with his team. There is also a
bathroom with no shower, and a tiny kitchen. At present, he has a little more
space, and also an excellent relationship with the embassy personnel and
security guards; though the most casual visitor can hardly avoid a sensation of
being in a place of internment.

For Christmas dinner, wearing the same clothes
as on the previous day, Assange welcomes his father, the Guatemalan lawyer, a
distinguished American investigative journalist who has lived in London for the
last twenty years, and his wife, a documentary film producer and social
activist; plus the writer. The American couple arrives with turkey, gravy,
potatoes, carrots and Christmas pudding all prepared by their daughter. They
have just returned from a three-week trip to India. On this occasion, the
conversation ranges over the world economy with Marx and Piketty as
protagonists, the latest hacking scandals, Jeremy Corbyn’s political misjudgements,
and the malleability of certain Oxbridge-educated journalists. No music this time although the
record-player is still there; and the atmosphere is a little more sombre, as if
in preparation for the end of the festive season and a return to dispiriting
routine.

But during dessert, Assange’s face lights up in
a smile when the film producer hands him her mobile. At the other end of the
line is Alicia Castro. “Alisha!
Merry Christmas! We are drinking your wines… What?” He approaches the window so
as to hear better. A couple of minutes later he returns with the news: “She is
well but sad at the change of president. She says Macri is governing by
decree.” Assange goes to the
kitchen and returns with a teapot from which hang the threads of a couple of
teabags. He pours tea into five cups.

A few more minutes of chat ensue before the
guests take their leave. Assange recounts sadly that he has managed to speak to
his mother and his children in France and Australia, “but can’t say much on a
secure line.” He says that he can feel no contentment let alone happiness
despite the pleasant experience of the last few hours. But nor is he in least
embittered, depressed, or resigned. After a moment’s reflection, he summarises
his feelings less with an assertion than a surmise: “I might, perhaps, be a
little angry?”.

Macri’s
support

Three days previously, on my initial visit, the
first thing he had asked was: “What’s happening with Macri?” He had wanted the
latest news about the freshly-elected Argentine president. He had read the
Wikileaks cables and been struck by one indicating that Macri had consulted the
governments of Israel and the United States before nominating the head of the
metropolitan police. Even so, Assange has not given up hope of establishing a good
relationship with the new Argentine government. He said that one of the main reasons why he had accepted the
idea of having an Argentine journalist write about his Christmas was because he
would like Macri and his team to understand better his situation and eventually
to support him in international forums, as had happened during Cristina
Kirchner’s administration.

The legal position in the United States looks
grim, Assange says, and all the more so if Hillary Clinton gets elected. The
former first lady has a personal grudge against him because Wikileaks published
State Department cables when she was in charge, and subsequently published
emails on State Department matters that she had sent from her personal email
account. Although it is now clear that he will not be prosecuted as a result
(if this were not so, then both this writer and this publication could be in
trouble) Assange will be aware that, following months of imprisonment in
conditions described by UN Special Rapporteur, Juan Méndez, as “akin to torture”, former Private First Class Chelsea Manning, the
presumed supplier to Wikileaks of US diplomatic and military communications who
is now serving a 28-year jail sentence, confessed to having been in touch with
someone “claiming to be Julian Assange”; and that investigators had unearthed
“erased” exchanges between Manning and a person “claiming to be Assange” in
which Manning received advice on how to steal documents for publication in
Wikileaks without leaving any trace of incriminating evidence. Asked if these
exchanges had taken place, Assange smiles and offers “no comment.”

On the positive side, Assange hopes to receive good
news from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD), which is
studying his case. If UNWGAD reaches an opinion to the effect that Assange
is being arbitrarily detained in the Ecuadorian embassy by Great Britain and
Sweden acting in concert, it would be based on the fact that Great Britain
and Sweden are failing to recognise the principle of political asylum which is
why they are refusing to allow him safe conduct to Ecuador, while his period of
effective internment has exceeded by more than a year the maximum sentence that
he would incur in Sweden were he to be convicted of the minor sexual offence
for which he is still being investigated but has not been accused. According to
Assange, formal publication of the UNWGAD opinion, which could and should break the
current deadlock, might then be held up by pressure from the UK, Sweden and
the US.

This is why Assange is seeking international
support and why Latin America in general and Argentina in particular - a
country that has earned international recognition for its commitment to
addressing domestic human rights issues - could take up his case and even,
perhaps, work towards reinforcing UNWGAD’s independence.

It might seem rather ingenuous to imagine that a
new government manifestly eager to align itself with the United States might be
willing to support a man who has exposed the most shameful and compromising
secrets in US history (with the possible exception of the subsequent
revelations of Edward Snowden). That would, indeed, be a miracle worthy of
Christmas. Assuming miracles exist.

__________________________________

This article was previously published in Spanish
in the Argentinean daily Página/12 http://www.pagina12.com.ar

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